This invention relates generally to electronics equipment racks and cabinets, and more particularly to apparatus and methods for organizing and managing multiple electrical cables connected to such electronics equipment.
Organizing and managing electrical cables connected to electronics equipment has always presented problems, particularly for installations having a plurality of electronics enclosures mounted in a rack or cabinet, such as in a computer data or network center, that have multiple input/output (I/O) interconnecting cables. A standard rack-mounted solid state memory, network switch or appliance may have, for instance, as many as 24, 48 or 96 I/O cables. Maintaining such a large number of cables in an organized orderly arrangement to avoid a “rat's nest” of randomly arrayed cables in a rack or cabinet is a challenge. Typically, electrical interconnecting cables are bundled together in groups and held together with cable ties, clamps or enclosed in a spiral plastic sheath, or the like. While such arrangements can avoid random arrays of cables and afford some organization, they are not necessarily the most efficient or effective approach, and they can present other problems.
Cable bundling is not convenient, for example, where it is necessary to change or reroute a cable, to access the equipment in place in the rack, or where it is necessary to pull a piece of electronics equipment out of the rack for maintenance or replacement. On such occasions, the cables generally must be disconnected to enable the equipment to be moved or to afford access, and the cables must then be reconnected when the equipment is replaced. This necessitates that each of the cables being labeled to identify it and to enable it to be reconnected to a proper port of the electronics equipment. This can be error prone. Moreover, cable bundles may result in a cable being bent at an angle sufficiently acute to cause damage to the cable or to its connector, or may otherwise degrade the cable's electrical performance, things which may be difficult to detect. Additionally, cable bundles may restrict air flow and inhibit cooling of electronics in the rack.
It is desirable to provide cable organization and management arrangements that avoid the foregoing and other problems associated with managing and organizing cables connected to electronics equipment, and it is to these ends that the present invention is directed.